The Genesis of Boomer Literature: A Brief History

Starting in December 2012, Boomer Literature, or baby boomer novels, suddenly became the talk of the town. A couple of articles were published and the blogosphere was quick to pick up the story. People began discussing the birth of boomer literature as a new genre on many heavily trafficked websites, from Boomer Café to The Passive Voice, Gawker Media, The Kindle Nation Daily, Digital Book Today and many others.

Suddenly retirees were fun, even sexy. Stories about them had found a market even if some disgruntled voices were heard, expressing discontent at the idea of having to grapple with yet another genre in books.

What had happened? Why the controversy?

You’d think the publishing industry would be the first to notice that a new genre was in the making, yet that is not the case. Hollywood preceded publishing. Perhaps it’s in the nature of the beast. Hollywood has access to a much larger public (everyone views films and videos) than the publishing industry (limited to people who read). As a result, one may expect that new trends in the general public, new tastes, new interests emerge first at the level of movies before they are reflected in book sales.

In any case, film directors were the first to take the plunge some ten years ago and aim movies at a silver-haired audience, taking, as is often the case, a novel as a starting point. Begley’s About Schmidt inspired a hilarious film made in 2002 starring an unforgettable Jack Nicholson. Although the film is rather far away from the book, there is little doubt that its success marked an early turning point. This change was noticed in the media some years ago, including by the New York Times.

A new film market for boomers

A film market for silver-haired audiences was born and many films followed exploiting the same marketing vein, some humorous and suspenseful like RED (i.e. Retired Extremely Dangerous), others more emotional and historical like The King’s Speech. But they all were centered on challenges facing the over-50 generation.

2012 was a special year, starting with a fun film that came out of England,The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Featuring Maggie Smith and Judi Dench, it focused on a bunch of British retirees on a romp in India. By year end, Amour, Michael Haneke’s film starring Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, took the trend one step further, featuring a somber story about a
couple of music teachers in their 80s (the wife is dying). It won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival and it is widely expected to win an Oscar for best foreign film.

This signals a major change in the tastes of the general public – and in this case, what is noteworthy is that the film features much older people than boomers. Indeed the only boomer here is the couple’s daughter, beautifully played by Isabelle Huppert. Moreover, the trend promises to continue in 2013 with Quartet, Dustin Hoffman’s brilliant film about retired opera singers.

Such movies suggest that the range of boomer interests is expanding: the themes can be either light or dark and likely to cover boomers themselves but also their relationships with people around them, both younger and older.

Defining a new genre

But how to define this new genre? And more to the point, how to avoid the negative connotations of such terms as “aging”, “old age”, “silver haired”?

After all, novels featuring older people have been around for some time without registering any particular success and the publishing industry has been in the habit of ignoring them, relying instead on its traditional range of genres. In particular, since the 1960s and 70s, the industry has kept a strong focus on the young: that was the time Young Adult literature became a huge success as boomers themselves – technically defined as those born between 1946 and 1964 – were leaving their teen years behind and wanted to read coming of age stories. With the exception of YA lit (and more recently New Adult lit focused on adults in their twenties), no other major genre is audience-centric. The industry has always relied on theme-related genres like romance, thrillers, sci-fi etc., to assist readers in book discovery. Indeed,YA lit itself is sub-divided in theme-related genres, from paranormal YA to dystopian YA, romantic YA etc.

Now that boomers are getting older, some 78 million of them in the US alone, and hitting retirement age at the rate of some 3.5 million every year, there is once again a need to meet their interests as readers. They want to read stories relevant to them at this stage in their life, stories that feature people facing the same kind of challenges that they do.

The “Coming of Old Age” Genre

Thus the new boomer lit genre could be defined as addressing “coming of old age”. Boomers, who in their young years were rebellious and keen to change to world of their parents, still see themselves as an active, dynamic lot. They are convinced that their third slice of life, made longer (and often better) by medical advances, is a chance for them to do amazing things, even start on a second career. And it is certainly a moment when people ask themselves existential questions again: now that my career is behind me, who am I? What can I do in my remaining years?

Books, to stay relevant, need to accompany these changes in their lives, meeting the new demands, putting forth characters boomers can identify with, characters who face those existential questions.

Hence the term boomer literature or Baby Boomer novels (BB novels), a term that eschews the negative connotations of “aged” and “aging.”

Why is there the expectation that boomer lit will become a major genre? This is a simple matter of demographics. The same generation that made the success of YA lit will be responsible for the success of boomer lit. In that sense, boomer lit or BB novels are a true pendant of YA novels, with BB stories occurring on the other side of maturity. But the similarities don’t stop there. Like YA lit, boomer lit is a vast and flexible genre that can accommodate all kinds of sub-genres, from light comedy to tragedy, from romance to thrillers and more. Beyond novels and graphic novels, it also covers poetry, short stories and non-fiction. And like YA, boomer lit is likely to attract the interest of people outside its age group, in this case younger people, both as readers and writers.

The progression of the new genre

In the fall of 2012, the movement towards the creation of a new BB genre gathered speed. In September, a thread was started on the Amazon Kindle fora for authors to list their BB novels and it immediately began to grow. In November, a group was created to discuss BB novels on Goodreads, the largest online reading club in the world. It began very small but at the start of 2013, the group had attracted close to 200 members and it featured over 50 titles on its bookshelf, including many from NYT bestselling authors and at least one runner up to the Man Booker Prize (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce). The group is actively reading a BB novel every month, democratically selected through a poll, as a practical way of exploring the confines of boomer literature.

A definition has already been put forward by two writers, Stephen Woodfin and Caleb Pirtle who are members of the group:”Boomer books reflect fundamental human issues and can be any genre, but they are character-driven stories centered around those who have the experience to understand life: its trials, its tribulations, its triumphs, and its contradictions.” And that understanding can only come about with the accumulation of years and experience…

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